Bloom's Taxonomy Verbs

Action verbs for the behavior part of a learning objective.

This is a list of common action verbs consistent with Bloom's Taxonomy, as compiled by Newton, P. M., Da Silva, A., & Peters, L. G. in their 2020 paper. Each tier is given under both the original names from Bloom and the revised names from Krathwohl's 2002 “A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy: An Overview”. The verbs are listed from the lowest level of cognitive thinking to the highest.

One caveat about that order: the two schemes disagree about the top two tiers. Bloom's original put Synthesis fifth and Evaluation sixth; the revision puts Evaluate fifth and Create sixth. The list below follows the revised order.

Knowledge or Remember

List, define, recall, state, label, repeat, name

Comprehension or Understand

Translate, paraphrase, discuss, report, locate, generalize, explain, classify, summarize

Application or Apply

Operate, apply, use, demonstrate, solve, produce, prepare, choose

Analysis or Analyze

Analyze, question, differentiate, experiment, examine, test, categorize, distinguish, calculate, contrast, outline, infer, discriminate, compare

Evaluation or Evaluate

Rate, evaluate, assess, judge, justify

Synthesis or Create

Create, compose, argue, design, plan, support, revise, formulate

The paper's authors also suggest avoiding: appreciate, know, familiar, aware, understand, select, explain, relate, arrange, choose. A few of these appear in the tiers above as well. The authors flag them because different institutions place the same verb at different tiers, which is exactly the confusion a learning objective is meant to avoid.

Newton, P. M., Da Silva, A., & Peters, L. G. (2020). A pragmatic master list of action verbs for Bloom's Taxonomy. Frontiers in Education, 5, 107.

Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A revision of Bloom's taxonomy: An overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(4), 212–218.